A Million Years in a Day
A Curious History of Daily Life
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4.3 • 11 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
'A wonderful idea, gloriously put into practice. Greg Jenner is as witty as he is knowledgeable' - Tom Holland
'You will love Greg Jenner's jolly account of how we have more in common with our ancestors than we might think ... all human life is here, amusingly conveyed in intriguing nuggets of gossipy historical anecdote' - Daily Mail
Every day, from the moment our alarm clock wakes us in the morning until our head hits our pillow at night, we all take part in rituals that are millennia old. In this gloriously entertaining romp through human history - featuring new updates for the paperback edition - BBC Horrible Histories consultant Greg Jenner explores the hidden stories behind these daily routines.
This is not a story of politics, wars or great events, instead Greg Jenner has scoured Roman rubbish bins, Egyptian tombs and Victorian sewers to bring us the most intriguing, surprising and sometimes downright silly nuggets from our past.
It is a history of all those things you always wondered - and many you have never considered. It is the story of our lives, one million years in the making.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jenner, a cowriter of the BBC's Horrible Histories series, muses about the historical antecedents of activities on a typical British Saturday in this entertaining work. He begins his day at 9:30 a.m. and proceeds to consider humans' historical and varied methods of dividing time, setting the pattern for succeeding chapters. Over the course of the day, Jenner reflects on the keeping of pets, human communication technologies, clothing, alcohol, dining, and even tooth-brushing. His extensive coverage of bodily functions in the chapter on "Answering the Call of Nature" may be a bit much for some readers, but he shows that humans have done some fairly gross things in our past (see the section on bathing, for instance). The fact-checking isn't always flawless for instance, Jenner credits Charles Wesley with the first utterance of "Cleanliness is next to godliness" rather than his brother John but this is a fun book, not a scholarly tome. His sources are also overwhelmingly Eurocentric, though he does include some references to Asia and the Americas. Jenner's book is an amusing examination of what we humans do with ourselves all day.
